


Insurance

by 3amepiphany



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, M/M, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23152756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: “I can’t pretend I know what I’m doing,” Juuse said.“You don’t have to,” Pekka told him, feeling those words twist into his gut as if they’d been some sort of dagger.
Relationships: Pekka Rinne/Juuse Saros
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	Insurance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bleedsgolden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedsgolden/gifts).



> This is my first RPF in a really, really, REALLY long time, and i think the first rpf i've ever actually posted to ao3. I spat it out in an evening because the thought just wouldn't escape me, and that's so much thanks to @bleedsgolden (and also hello yes @hottestsingles over on the twitters) for it. woof. also three whole days without sports after finally having friends to be loud about sports with is leaving me in a weird place ok
> 
> the premise was mostly based off of a 2018 interview where Pekka said Juuse and Miikka stayed at his place when he was playing for finland in the '16 world cup and the article author took pekka's "that's what insurance is for" comment about letting other ppl live in his home and drive his car while he's not there and completely took that to mean Juuse himself was insurance and like. that was lovely to me in a weird way. also i'll never get over miikka's comment in the same interview about how their talks would make him leave the room sometimes ???
> 
> anyhow, thank you, enjoy, please be kind, and i dunno, leave me a comment or something, tell me you hate it i'll even accept that

Pekka stood there, his hand shaking and his jaw clenched so tightly that he could feel the pressure building behind his ears, gathering at the base of his skull where it met his neck and knowing it was going to culminate in yet another headache that would force him to have to lay down. Juuse watched him carefully, and Pekka could tell that the young man absolutely regretted saying it all aloud.

“I’m just insurance,” Juuse repeated, his own hands balled into fists, though the anger with which he had said this the first time was gone. This was sad, this was tired. “You’re only here to protect that.”

“That’s out of context,” Pekka started, but Juuse stopped him, bringing a hand up and seemingly batting the words as they came out of his mouth and across the quiet room. He thought for a moment that he might even have heard them hit the far wall, but it was just the sound of his own heartbeat echoing in his ears, pounding in his chest and rattling his ribcage like it couldn’t even stand him in the moment, couldn’t stand being him, couldn’t stand keeping him alive and really just wanted him to drop dead. He very much felt that way about himself here. He’d thought it was a private conversation in the garden and that the only other beings listening were the bees that lazed about the roses in the sun, collecting both pollen and gossip to take back to the hives past the stables to turn into honey - golden, cloying, coveted. Knowing now that it hadn’t been he wished he’d never said it. But how to explain himself here? He was frustrated, yes, but he wasn’t frustrated with Juuse. He could never be frustrated with Juuse. The day he ever became so he knew would be the day he would die, because that would have meant that he’d failed him. That he’d failed the rest of the court - no, all of Nashville and the kingdom - in preparing and guiding the prince for his eventual role.

He could feel a stitch in his temple beginning to form and pull. Kevin’s apologetic grimace flashed through his mind. That seemed like ages ago.

“Pekka, please. It’s your job to raise my confidence and your job to make sure I’m worthy of the people who will see it and rely on it in both the darkest and the brightest times we will see as a kingdom. I cannot fault you for that. I can’t fault you either for realizing you’re too good at it. I’m a line of insurance for you and you speak the truth of that. It’s not my father’s rule that I am the legacy of. It’s yours.”

“I have an allegiance to the crown, Juuse - I will still have an allegiance to you. I always will and that is the truth. I’m sworn by blood to protect not just the royal lineage before you but you as well and that which you continue. But I am lucky enough to be here in this time and place to be asked to go beyond my normal duties and to protect you as I see fit. That includes arming you with knowledge as well as skill, with clarity as well as confidence. With joy and benevolence as well as the capability to handle sorrow and loss.”

“Insurance. S’all it is,” Juuse spat out alongside the fire that was back again in his throat.

“What would you have me do? Leave you out there with a lacking education in the defence of yourself and your future rule? That gets whole courts broken against the boards like weakened switches, the likes that children play with because they know no better. That leaves lands to ruin. I love you as I love the ‘ville itself. To me you _are_ the ‘ville. And I want it to be sustainable. Self-sufficient.”

“Stop.”

“Strong.”

“ _STOP_ ,” yelled the prince, his voice tearing through the air. Pekka waited. Juuse sighed, angrily. “Stop, enough. I could run you through like a fish on a pike, I’m so upset.”

“...You could.” Pekka heard himself say. “If you won’t hear me out then perhaps I don’t deserve the apology. Perhaps, I deserve to be put on a pike for the harm caused, in all honesty. And you most definitely would be well within your right to try, sir.”

Juuse’s back straightened after a moment of consideration at this comment. Neither one of them had their batons at their sides: the prince had his rapier on him, the polished cage sitting low at his hip atop the oiled sheath. Pekka had his broadsword on one hip and his short sword on the other and for a second or two he could feel the fear in him well up as he tried to decide if he ought to at least remove the belt that the short sword hung on. Juuse didn’t seem to care either way, arming himself quickly and dropping into an attack stance. The older man met him almost instantly, shifting a foot back defensively and making a clear point of wrapping both hands tight around the leather-wrapped hilt of the broadsword. He told himself to keep them there, no matter what. The last thing he wanted to do was _actually_ stab Juuse in the back.

The point of the rapier came at him fast and surprisingly right for his face, but he deflected it with his guard. Juuse took the movement fluidly, using it to wind himself up a bit before going in at him again low and to the ribs. The swords met blade on blade and Pekka angled his to the flat to push Juuse away. He stepped into the movement as well and checked the young man in the chest with his shoulder, sending him back some feet and forcing him to reestablish his balance.

Juuse didn’t hesitate when he came back to the peak of it though, coming back in with a hard thrust to Pekka’s left, and juking to the right with the next step like a dancer allowing themself to fall forward dramatically. This made Pekka twist at his core and he could feel his muscles strain, could feel his knees moving almost automatically to keep from torquing in the wrong direction with the suddenness of the action. He brought his broadsword down intending to slap it flat against Juuse’s shoulder, but then Juuse righted himself in the same moment, nearly letting the blade catch him in the crook of his neck as he did. He rolled away, rounding about angrily once he realized that Pekka had pulled the hit back to let him keep his head. The fire was still in his throat as he yelled, a bright curse word that seemed to singe everything in its path like an explosive geyser. That fire filled him completely now, and Pekka could see it in his eyes as he fumed.

He lunged again, this time managing to glance Pekka’s face, drawing blood, but he didn’t jump away from the rapier. He had stepped into it once he saw the point pass his peripheral and tried the same action he had just performed. It resulted this time in Pekka slapping the flat of his blade against Juuse’s cheek and ear as he turned it with Juuse’s continued movement forward. They hit, bodily, and pushed off of each other.

“I can’t pretend I know what I’m doing,” Juuse said.

“You don’t have to,” Pekka told him, feeling those words twist into his gut as if they’d been some sort of dagger. He instinctively put a hand to his stomach to ensure that he was still whole and hadn’t legitimately been run through as Juuse had threatened to do. In the next breath he forced this hand back to the hilt, feeling his own short sword jingle and flap against his thigh as he squared his feet and shoulders in one solid snap.

They batted points about for a short bit before slashing edge to edge and Juuse came at his chest with another deep stab. Pekka fell back. “You know what you’re doing, Juuse.”

“ _Stop it,_ ” he bellowed, and moved in with another deep stab, almost wildly.

Pekka didn’t want to think of it as a panicked response but he let his blade circle up to forcibly catch Juuse’s arm at the elbow. It made contact and dragged against the fabric of the prince’s sleeve well enough to tear it, well enough to slide against the skin under it and more or less shave and chafe him but not slice him open. Pekka used the same momentum to bump him in the joint. There was a loud pop and Juuse fell back several steps, tossing his rapier into his other hand while he shook his whole arm out and clenched and unclenched his fist, ensuring that his elbow hadn’t just been broken, but likely feeling the shock of the hit all the way down to his fingers. He rolled his shoulder to complete the check, and without taking the rapier back into his dominant hand, lunged again. The point came right for Pekka’s collarbone and caught on his own vest, doing some loud, startling damage to the fabric and brocade there as he leaned back and down to keep it from following through his chest or neck. As he straightened up Juuse parried both of Pekka’s counters to that strike, easily. The prince bounced back, switching his grip again and almost harnessing his anger now, having let it get the better of him and knowing that was going to end this for him poorly if he didn’t fix that.

The knight used that to take the offensive. He swung at Juuse, whose face clearly showed his fear at the move as he angled his cage just in time to catch the broadsword before it could connect with his shoulder or head. There was a messy clashing of blades and flats before they pushed off again, Pekka feeling himself stalk about like the lions of the royal menagerie that they’d watch often at feeding time. Hungry. Angry. Ready to sink his claws and teeth into the soft hide of his prey. This wasn’t play. It hadn’t been from the start. But now he was certain he would kill the prince if he had to. It was clear that Juuse would kill him, as well, as strangely unpredictable as he was letting himself become in his fighting.

They came to a void, and Juuse called him an old man - that stung worse than the rapier nick he’d gotten earlier. He had no reply that wasn’t his blade smacking Juuse’s threateningly. Juuse dared a small thrust forward, and Pekka slapped it away, hard, with a strong swing as he came down on one knee. It almost knocked the rapier out of Juuse’s grip. He jumped back up to both feet and shook his broadsword, waiting. It was an odd, mid-stance and Juuse’s eyes narrowed as he tried to read Pekka’s next move. “Come _on,_ old man, what will you do? Your insurance isn’t having it anymore.”

“It’s paying out, really,” Pekka grumbled. He took a step in, and Juuse reacted - he brought the rapier up to parry but expected Pekka to go with a higher slash. Instead, the broadsword came down and then up in a surprising thrust, nearly catching him in the armpit as his hand and guard were so overdrawn. He twisted away and Pekka could see him winding his arm back down for a wide slash that would have caught him in the ear or across the back of his shoulder if he didn’t decide to roll forward with the blade.

There was an awkward moment as they struggled to turn and face each other cleanly, though Pekka dug his heel in and pushed himself forward. The point of his broadsword went straight for Juuse’s face and in the move to avoid that Juuse lost ground. Pekka swung at him heavily, purposefully and frighteningly so and with each parry there wasn’t time for a riposte. Juuse stepped back and back and back, gasping and yelling with each hit and then he stopped as he couldn’t walk back any further. Nor could he duck or lean or twist away, his back was flat against the wall, and his shoulders were locked. Pekka’s blade streaked and sparked against the armory wall as it came down again, barely stopped by the rapier with a final, desperate, single-handed block and a noticeably weak hold before everything came to a standstill.

Pekka had also fallen to a single-handed grip and his arm had come up to pin Juuse’s free forearm to his chest, the blade of the short sword he’d pulled into play sharp against the prince’s sweat-slick throat and jawline, nicking and rubbing and producing blood with all the movement between them.

Pekka waited for Juuse to yield, but there were no words, just the two of them breathing, chests heaving.

Juuse was red in the face, the fire in his eyes simmering now. His lips twitched. There was still no yield.

Pekka leaned against him harder, came in closer. Juuse gasped as the blade bit at him, but then he lifted his chin. Pekka thought this was to ease the pressure and was ready to hold, but when Juuse licked at his lips, breath hot against Pekka’s own cheek and jaw, the pause became hesitant. Confused.

Juuse’s chest moved under his own. Deep. Shuddering. A different sort of surrender.

The prince craned his head forward and their lips met. Pekka dropped his weapons, and Juuse let his cage clatter about the stone for just a second before dropping his rapier, too. The knight pressed his vowed charge against the wall, no longer looking to spill blood or wring a cry for mercy out of him due to the violence of their fight. At the very least, not due to the violence of their fight. There were other ways, and so suddenly those came to him here yet again, no longer confined to the maze of roses where they often walked and talked and teased and bonded. No longer confined to duties and expectations. Pekka pulled at Juuse’s lips with his own, roughly and with a little teeth, and then moved to kiss and suck at the beading blood on Juuse’s jaw, and neck.

“I can’t pretend I know what I’m doing,” Juuse said again, quietly, groaning a bit as Pekka’s knee pressed at his inner thigh, as Pekka pressed his hips into Juuse’s. As Pekka licked and kissed at his throat, they slowly lowered themselves down to the floor, haphazardly undressing themselves as they went. Pekka tossed his vest aside and helped Juuse from his doublet and shirt, and Juuse’s bare back arched a bit as he laid down on the floor and tugged at the hems of Pekka’s loose blouse.

The older man pulled the blouse up and over his head, and revelled in Juuse’s hands touching at his stomach and sides, and hungrily roving up along his chest. “You don’t have to,” he repeated, settling down between Juuse’s legs and pressing their hips together again, pressing their lips together again. Noisily, they kissed and breathed, and kissed some more, feeling at one another’s lithe bodies with eager fingers instead of blades.

Belts were next to go, along with boots, and pants, and then the last of any worry or hesitation in Pekka’s mind. Here they were again - never ashamed in front of one another whether a tunic or a slip or neither between them - though now there was no more pretense or boundaries. And Pekka touched him, taking him in hand gently with the help of a quick daub of spittle in his palm, the faint taste of Juuse’s blood still in his mouth. Juuse’s hips jumped at Pekka’s hand, his mouth widening in a gasp and his dark brows furrowing for a split second as he adjusted. He was stunning. He was such a bright star. He was the sun. Pekka dared to stare at him and his blinding smile as he worked at him, leaning in and stealing kisses so light, so heavenly as to be Icarus, rejoicing in his flight and caressing the sun. Still, as Icarus was, he was in free fall over this younger man before him, legs fallen open as far as they could go and arms splayed about looking for purchase as Pekka celebrated him, praised him, loved him.

He dared not bring Juuse to the end yet, but did instead cup him and pet at him, and pressed at him carefully, waiting to see if he would approve of what Pekka wanted of him as Juuse caught his breath and begged him not to stop. “I won’t,” he assured him, kissing his chest and licking again at the marks from his blade as he spoke, asking him if it would be okay if, if they could, if he could…

“Pekka,” Juuse murmured, his smile turning into that familiar, sharp and boyish smirk. “My defenses have fallen. I yield, I yield!”

That was what he needed to hear. This prince that he’d loved for so long, protected and taught and pushed and prayed over and hoped to bring to the throne as a well-rounded and mighty force of an individual was here, crumbling beneath him out of his own want and accord, and Pekka did not linger any longer. He gave him another kiss, sloppy and slick, spit the both of them once again onto his hand and fingers, and set to quell that awful fire within him, and fill Juuse with himself, instead. The moan that escaped him was nothing compared to the sound that escaped Juuse - a loud hiss as he breathed in through clenched teeth followed by a keening that rode the exhale and ended in a deep, rumbly groan. Juuse’s heels dug into the backs of Pekka’s thighs and along his backside as his legs moved about and they tried to get into a position that would be comfortable, tucking their discarded clothing under knees and elbows and shoulders to soften their work against the floor.

They moved together, a little clumsy at first and learning the pace as well as each other’s limits, but soon they’d mastered the basics and moved on to the fancier bits - a twist of a hip here and the curl of one’s back there, a flowing choreography of sorts that demanded a physical control they had both practiced before over and over and over for years with batons, with blades, with wit, and yet also with inhibition. Pekka let himself adore Juuse, marvelling in the way the prince’s rage had dimmed to a soft, ruddy blush across his face and how the insides of his elbows and the backs of his knees did the same. He felt along all of the obvious breaks along his arms and his chest and legs where shirts and pants were rolled up and out of the way for walks or runs or labor or even just for laying in the fields that grew untended and full of wildflowers, past the hives and stables, taking the summer into his skin and its sky into his eyes. And oh, his eyes. Pekka loved them in every shade they turned. He loved them even when they were gray and mirrored the dark and dangerous storm that had once caught them in the garden maze upon the hottest day of the summer and kept them sequestered like secret lovers in one of the quiet little covered enclaves until it passed; this same storm had built itself up within Juuse through this whole ordeal and was finally breaking, finally releasing the pressure, dissipating that heavy, fuzzy haze from the energy in the air with a sharp gust of wind and a great shuddering - a deep exhalation, a rending cry and then a slow, delicious uncurling of toes and fists from hair. 

Pekka untangled himself enough to lay down comfortably on top of Juuse, lips dotting at him still, their hips twitching upon meeting again, sticky, sensitive.

Juuse spoke first.

“I doubted you, Pekka. That will eat at me forever. I was ready to kill you.”

Pekka sighed. He rubbed at Juuse’s arm and kissed at his chin softly. “It is good, though. You also will have to learn that; to doubt, to question, to speak upon your initiatives and trust those around you. You’ll have to learn that one day I will not be here to advise you, to train or support you. My goal is to make sure you succeed the throne and ensure the court follows your lead and protects you as we are meant to. Other kingdoms will want you for their own, and still others will want to see you fail in your rule. But you are ours. And I mean to convey that to those that need to hear it in a way that they will understand. It’s not about me, Juuse. None of this was ever about me, it was all about you. Always. You. And who you will be and what you will do. That’s my job, it’s my love. For you. My love.”

“I’m sorry.” And the crack in Juuse’s voice at that nearly made Pekka fall apart entirely. He cupped the prince’s face in his hands and shushed him.

“Don’t - no, don’t say that. Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry. Others will never be party to me the way you do and that includes my words and what intentions I share with them. And you had to hear that and you had no context. _I_ am sorry.”

Juuse relaxed under him, but his eyes still glinted and glittered as he fought again with the weight of the world and his role in it. Pekka shifted his hand down and rand his thumb against the blade marks on Juuse’s throat. They were still wet, and he worried about the questions they’d get upon rejoining the world outside of the armory.

For now, though, there was no more vitriol from loose words and gossip in their mouths, only pure honey; golden, sweet yet delicate. Coveted.


End file.
